#dialoguefromplays

Breathe. Be Kind. Breathe. Be Brave. Breathe. Fail Forward. ...This above all: to thine own self be true...

Four Years ago today, Jeremy O. Torres (1974-2016) took his last big breath... The following are excerpts from some of Jeremy’s favorite plays he directed: 'Kill Devil Hills', 'Angels in America', 'Pontiac Firebird Variations', 'Tibetan Book of the Dead', 'Marfa Lights', 'Kansas City Book of the Dead', & Shakespeare’s sonnets.

Remember to breathe as you read:

"Look Up. Look Up, Prepare the way, the infinite descent, a breath in air floating down. Glory. We’ll mend together. That’s what we’ll do. We’ll mend. The Great Work begins. The messenger has arrived."

Breathe.

"Things are shifting now...shifting. You wanna fly, jack? Everything that rises must fall."

"Through a tunnel now. Brightly..Or some kind of tunnel...soaring like kites...and in the tunnel dream, I’m able to utter things like angel..and give them meaning."

"Your thoughts are like telegraph signals I can hear and the morse code beep - beeping of every little plaintive electromagnetic spark in your mind, rouses me. And the only thing that’s palpable is the sand - and the wind - and the fire - and us.

Breathe.

"They say its heavy but its not, conscience is light, it gives you wings, gives a man pluck - it separates the beasts of the land - will you ever know love without it ? forget it. know what it means to have someone that needs you and to need them back. the feeling moving beyond your own skin, Weak frame, limitation, a gushing spirit what it is. It roosts in your bosom like a sooth-soul bird and crows in the morning and awakens your heart. It redeems any man that keeps it. And to live right you should trust to yourself to live with it or die for it."

Breathe.

"All along the spokes of that great wheel you have what the Buddhist’s call the ‘Bardo’ which is like a gateway state or a kaw river through which them hungry souls can float their way to true reality. All board. So the dharmakaya is the voice of all sounds, the ra ra ra, true words that calleth em over from the fires and the hunger and the bleeding Kansas darkness. Recite your name. Recite. Recite. [Jeremy Oscar Torres, 2016] All Aboard. Ad Infinitum. Behold your hiding place is open. The Gateway state is open. Osiris is open. All Aboard. Infinite space before you without the clucking or crowing - from the ashes of the phonenix the soul takes wing. Infinite mind is before you without center or circumference. From the drum of the ear the feather is plucked. Infinite sound is before you without the bubbling, without the babbling. From the Heart of Death, the Soul bursts forth. Your soul is open - your ear is wide open."

Breathe.

"The forces of attraction in the air between us - all around us - the gravitation pull yoking us together and then yanking us apart."

Breathe.

"Thou knowest tis common all that lives must die, passing through nature to eternity."

Breathe.

"The valiant never taste of death but once. Of all the wonders that I yet have heard it seems to me most strange that man should fear, seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come."

Breathe.

"Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore, so do our minuets hasten to their end."

Breathe.

"My friend, The time has come for you to start out. You are going home. Oh nobly born, now is the moment. Before you is mind, open and wide as space, simple, without center or circumference. Now is the moment. Your mind in this moment is total transparency no color no substance empty sparkling, pure and vibrant. A mass of light. Not stopped by any obstacle. It has neither beginning nor end, go toward the light, merge with it, merge with the light. Death has happened, it happens to every one. Death has happened so nothing can hurt you, you can’t die again, don’t be afraid, merge with the light. Merge. Merge."

Breathe in. Breathe out.